Doll sizes in the Doll’s House – part 2

But there was, and still is to some extent, one thing missing: scale. Though dolls for the doll’s house are generally to scale they are not identical. As humans vary in shape and size, within limits, so do dolls for the doll’s house.

Though we try to miniaturise each garment to be a true to life miniature of the original, there is no one size fits all answer. The thickness of the yarn, size of the needles and number of stitches largely determines the size of the garment.

Small changes at the miniature level are large changes in full size. For example, the width of a jumper, which measures 1½- inches/4 cm at miniature size is a 36-inch/90 cm chest at full size. But 2-inches/5 cm at the miniature level is a 48-inch/120 cm chest at full size.

The same is true of length. Here the shape of the doll is important. Consider a play fashion doll such as Barbie for example. Fashion designs that were originally sketched were made to show off their garments on a tall, slender model, which subsequently became the fashion doll. These dolls (albeit at 1:6th scale) are designed to accentuate the leg length, which is disproportionate (even if you are a supermodel!) to the body. Equally, the waist is extremely small. So even if fashion dolls were manufactured in 1:12th scale, our patterns would not fit properly due to shape of the doll.

Equally, in theory, if one of our patterns is knitted on large enough needles with thick enough yarn, you could reverse the miniaturisation process and reproduce the full size garment to fit a human.